Dancing For Rain
by Rusen 'Kiwi' Redhex
Summary: Lead me to Heaven.


_Dancing for Rain_

_I'm losing daylight!_

Exhaustion.

_I can't work any faster!_

The body under her glowing hands twitched, and she drew back for a moment, dark eyes sparking with desolate hope. He groaned and stilled again. She swept her fingertips over an artery in his neck, checking for a pulse - still alive. She could still save him.

Then a murmur made her head snap up. Maroon eyes focused on an unmoving body, one she was shocked to recognize. She heard her name whispered through the rain pounding the ground.

_No._

She raised her head, hands paralyzed.

_No…_

She stood on throbbing legs to see the other victim. The boy whose blood was mixing with rain, tainting the ground with ghastly scarlet syrup. She stumbled over to him, heart clenching when she grasped the nightmare before her.

_Brother… why? You weren't even supposed to fight… And now, here you lie, with the life bleeding out of you…_

He coughed, smiling up at her. She dropped to her knees. His sightless eyes stared past her, making her heart twist like a mangled rag. He shouldn't have been allowed to fight, never, ever, ever…

"_Momma! Shuurin broke my favorite doll!"_

"_Odoriko, you know how young he is-"_

"_But Momma!"_

"_No, now go apologize."_

Her own saltwater tears joined the watery blood that soaked the ground as she worked over him frantically. She couldn't let him die here. Not her little brother. The day he lost his sight, she vowed to protect him with her life. Not let him bleed out in the rain like some sort of…

"_You can't!"_

"_But I want to, I won't be happy doing anything else."_

"_Shuurin, you can't be a fighter, you know that!"_

Like some sort of soldier.

"Sister?"

She shushed him, told him not to talk. He had to make it through this. For her.

"Sister…"

"Don't!" she whispered to him. Everything within her was breaking. She could see through her tears how unevenly his heart was beating, how much blood he was losing, how many bones were broken.

"Odoriko, please," he coughed out. "I'll be okay."

How could he be so calm? He was _dying_!

(_Dancing on the thin line between life and death. The link between black and white, drought and rain. Grey area_.)

"P-Please, save your strength." Her hands hurt, fingertips starting to tingle into numbness.

He chuckled.

"_Shuurin!" she had called to him._

_Thump. She flinched, then laughed at how he pulled away from the wall he had run into, embarrassed._

"_I was going to tell you to look out…"_

"_I'll be okay," he told her with a sheepish look._

_She smiled, knowing he would be._

_He laughed._

His warm laugh turned into hoarse coughing, and she was horrified to see red run from his lips. "You've always been scared-" He took a deep, pained breath. "You've always been scared of letting go."

_Letting go? _She was horrified at his implication, how could that thought even cross his mind? "Brother, please, save your strength, you'll be fine, I…" She stopped suddenly at the realization that she couldn't promise him anything. Not when it counted.

"I-I'll be okay," he told her, weakly lifting a hand and brushing his palm against her cheek. She caught it and held it there urgently.

"Brother!" she cried when he went limp and his hand dropped onto the ground soundlessly. "Please, just hold on!"

(_And she was dancing so desperately for rain_.)

His eyes had drifted shut, but the serene smile remained. "I'll be okay…"

_He's going to die_.

Tears poured harder from her eyes as he hugged him gently, feeling her own soaked clothes stick to her skin.

"I'll be okay." It was barely a whisper.

"Please, Brother…"

His smile started to fade. "Odoriko? Please, do one more thing for me…"

"Anything."

His eyes opened one last time; raindrops fell into them, almost making his grey irises shimmer silver. "Lead me to heaven."

She brushed his amber bangs from his face. "I love you…"

His chest rose and fell for the last time.

She could only lay beside him, close his eyes gently, stroke his cheek as she cried. She didn't hear the ninja behind her, didn't see her former sensei's shocked expression. She didn't hear her best friend's sob.

* * *

"Odoriko?"

She turned her head to see Makiba holding a tray of food out to her.

"Leave it there, please."

Her best friend nodded solemnly and set the tray on her bed. "Tell me if you need anything else, okay?"

She nodded, then turned in her chair and smiled. "I will. Thank you."

Makiba hated that smile. It was so hollow. Her friend hadn't been the same since the battle four years ago. She walked slowly towards the door, then closed it quietly. She remembered the tortured wails, night after night, after Odoriko had moved in. She couldn't imagine someone so close to her being killed so uselessly, much less having to relive it night after night in her subconscious mind.

Odoriko turned back to her desk after the door was shut and continued to scrape the pen across the paper. Ink seeped into the parchment in slow, feathery shapes, and she lifted the quill to examine her work. The picture was of a shaded landscape, rain pelting the structure set in the middle. The same stone where her brother's name was carved. She etched at the KIA stone, trying to get the silhouette just right, but the figure seemed to fade into the sketchy rain.

* * *

When she laid in the hospital bed mere months later, staring up at the ceiling through garnet eyes, she remembered her promise to Shuurin. Somewhere in her mind, she scoffed at the morbid circumstantial irony, the hands of fate that had placed her in this residential hospital where she lay dying. She knew how quickly she was losing her already less-than-firm grip on reality as nurses and doctors rushed around her. Was she really destined to die like this? The pain of so many bleeding battle wounds slowly going numb?

Was she going to die alone, just like that?

Memories swirled about in her head, old mingling with new. She saw Makiba's eyes, dead, a katana impaling her through the chest. She saw the KIA stone, spattered with so much blood as to make the names unreadable. She saw the enemy nin rushing her as she tiredly worked to save those who still had a chance, then watched as he pushed cold, wet metal into her stomach. Then, back in the hospital, everything faded and clashed backwards as her vision flickered. Thick red liquor was washing into her good eye however hard the nurses tried to keep it wiped away.

Only one eye still glowed a dull wine red now. The other glared a blank grey. She had blinded herself in that eye out of rage, hatred that she was so _alone_.

She wouldn't be much longer, she supposed. She was in an unconventional state of calm when she closed her eyes.

"_Sister!"_

"_Shuurin, why aren't you training with your team?"_

"_They told me I could stay home today, so it's okay!"_

_Her heart broke._

In spite of herself, a tear traced a path from her good eye to her ear. _If you can hear me, brother, please…_

_Lead me to heaven…_

* * *

_Odoriko - dancer_

_Shuurin - autumn rain_

_Shuurin, Odoriko, and Makiba are my OCs, they belong to me._

_I feel so bad that I haven't uploaded anything in so long. __This was inspired by the song "Dancing For Rain" by Rise Against. __I've never actually written a story that made me tear up before._

_And I'm not begging for reviews either, I know this kinda sucked._


End file.
